Let's have a Moonshot discussion after the Summit this Forum Friday!

[tclementi]

This week, Vice President Joe Biden held the Cancer Moonshot Summit in Washington DC where medical leaders, patients, advocates, companies and others met to discuss how we can speed up cancer research to find a cure. Patient Power was there, reporting and now we ask you, "What do you want to see come out of Moonshot? What are your top 3 goals?" Answer our poll and then watch our coverage below-

patientpower.info/series/pa...

[Hidden]

I am a bit skeptical as to just what this sort of thing can accomplish. Basically all I can see happening is a streamlining of the FDA approval process. I am not sure that is a good thing. I guess what I would like to see is an emphasis on scientific communication so that people can more readily become aware of what others are working on. Waiting until a conference is not a very efficient way to keep up with what is going on. One of the problems with research is communication. It is important for researchers to share not only their successes, but also their failures and problems so that others can either avoid those same difficulties/dead ends or perhaps bring new ideas approaches to the problems.

Anecdotally, during my career as a research scientist I once tried to apply a new technique in my research but couldn't get it to work. I only succeeded after spending several months during a sabbatical leave visiting the lab that had developed the method. The published descriptions had left out quite a few essential and not very obvious steps. This sort of difficulty could be addressed by a combination of more comprehensive information exchanges and MONEY to allow personnel exchanges between working groups.

[tclementi in reply to Hidden]

Great points Todd! I agree about how streamlining the FDA approval process could be an issue (rushing to approve it could lead to mistakes or other things) and how communication should be improved!

Side note- very cool that you were/are a research scientist